...Strangely, researchers (click here) have never followed American women who, like S., couldn't get the abortions they wanted, the New York Times Magazine reported. That's about to change. The magazine reported on a study, led by Diana Greene Foster, a demographer and professor of ob-gyn at the University of California, San Francisco. Foster's study is the first to track American women like this over a longer period of time—and the first in the world to compare those women with peers who successfully received abortions.

Although her study is ongoing, Foster already has some answers. Compared to their peers who received abortions, women who can't get the abortions they want have poorer health and are more likely to live in poverty two years on, even though they qualified for government assistance programs as new moms. Meanwhile, everybody in the study, whether they got abortions or not, generally had the same levels of depression and anxiety....

A government like the USA cannot limit women's options in life, assign them to motherhood and then cut off their nutritional support. They do not equate. If ever abortion was eliminated from the rights of women the government has to pick up the slack for the lack of opportunity and choices.

Enforced poverty is not an option in the USA. This is not exclusively a woman's issue. Women are often in relationships. If those relationships are strained because of an unwanted pregnancy; what is she going to do? What then is he going to do? How many men are in poverty because of unwanted pregnancies?

House votes to cut food stamps by $2 billion US (click here)

By Mary Clare Jalonick
June 19, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted on Wednesday to cut food stamps by $2 billion a year as part of a wide-ranging farm bill.

The chamber rejected 234-188 a Democratic amendment to the five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm legislation that would have maintained current spending on food stamps, now called the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program,  or SNAP. The overall bill cuts the $80 billion-a-year program by about 3 percent and makes it harder for some people to qualify.

The food stamp cuts have complicated passage of the bill and its farm-state supporters were working to secure votes Wednesday. Many conservatives have said the food stamp cuts do not go far enough since the program has doubled in cost in the last five years and now feeds 1 in 7 Americans. Liberals have argued against any reductions, contending the House plan could take as many as 2 million needy recipients off the rolls. The White House has threatened a veto over the food stamp cuts....